The Philippines’ bloody ‘War on Drugs’ a.k.a. ‘Oplan: Tokhang’ came at the cost of nearly 8,000 lives of civilian victims according to data gathered by a non-government organization (NGO) in the Philippines.
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) estimates that 7,742 civilians have been killed from anti-illegal drug operations across the country, according to their data gather from over 40 sources, including both local and international newspapers run in English and Filipino languages.
However, this number only includes unarmed individuals who died in the hands of both police and vigilante groups – meaning that ACLED’s numbers remain conservative for the most part.
This number is 25% higher than the tally of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), which stated that 6,201 were killed by the police during its operations. PDEA further said that they have since arrested 311,686 individuals related to drugs out of 216,138 anti-illegal drug operations conducted from July 2016 to September 2021.
The ‘War on Drugs’ a.k.a. ‘Oplan: Tokhang’ is one of the main platforms of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration. As early as his second day in office in 2016, he declared that he will kill those who try to destroy the country, especially the lives of the youth. During Duterte’s presidency, ‘Oplan: Tokhang’ has come under fire among international human rights groups. The operations were suspended temporarily from January and October 2017, before it began once again two months later by December 2017.
“If you destroy my country, I will kill you. If you destroy our children, I will kill you”, said Duterte in 2016.
